If you’re starting your career at PwC, deciding where you’ll do it has gotten a lot easier.
The Big Four firm cut the number of US locations where entry-level consultants can start working to just 13, BI’s Polly Thompson exclusively reports.
Limiting the options — new hires could previously choose any of the 72 US offices — is about building a greater sense of community among junior employees early in their careers, Yolanda Seals-Coffield, chief people and inclusion officer for PwC US, told Polly.
It’s an example of how PwC is evolving in the AI era. Polly previously reported on the firm’s launch of a learning initiative to train workers in specific skills necessary for AI. It also created a new career path aimed at engineers.
It’s not just PwC. Polly has done a fantastic job covering consulting firms and their attempt to use AI without upending their business. AI agents are still falling short of outright replacing human consultants, but the CEO of one AI training giant told BI the models are learning fast.
In the meantime, AI use by entry-level employees remains a key issue.
On the one hand, the tech can automate a lot of the mind-numbing work that juniors get bogged down with early on. On the other hand, skipping that initial work means losing foundational knowledge that is crucial down the road.
The AI-for-juniors issue isn’t specific to consulting.
The risks posed by training young workers on AI are universal. And with so much emphasis on benefiting from AI, companies can’t delay their decision much longer.
“What differentiates outperformers in 2026 won’t be strategy; it will be execution,” Paul Griggs, CEO of PwC US, told me last month when discussing big themes for the year.
Leaders need to be “hyper intentional around discipline, around road maps, around building teams that are measured based on what they execute,” Griggs added.
Two senior bankers I spoke with last month raised questions about how to use AI efficiently early in your career. They debated the benefits of expediting a junior’s path toward more impactful work, alongside the risks of creating a knowledge gap by skipping early steps.
It’s a tricky balance. Forgoing it entirely means you risk falling behind your competitors. Leaning in too heavily risks losing the attribute your clients still pay you big bucks for: human judgment.
“You’re missing some of this basic training that’s actually a very important underpin and foundation to your more sophisticated evaluation and judgment of things at a later stage in your career,” one of the bankers said about outsourcing early work to AI.
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